Currey is the Chairman of Oxford-based
James Currey Publishers Ltd. He had previously worked with Heinemann
Educational Books and Oxford University Press.

AWS, Chinua Achebe, & all
those Books

Nourdin
Bejjit: You worked for Oxford University Press before going to Heinemann
Educational Books. What made you decide to move to the African Writers
Series?

James Currey: Oxford University Press was
an excellent apprenticeship particularly in Cape Town. Rex Collins
did start the Three Crown Series and this was particularly good
at bringing on playwrights like Soyinka and J. P Clark, and so on.
But the OUP, apart from anything else, there was a decision not
to publish novels by contemporary writers and, so, that although
they allowed short stories to be published they did not publish
novels. I think, you see, the African Writers Series started in
1962, the Three Crown Series was started, I think 1961 or 1962.

Then OUP - I spent three years with them publishing
a wide range of serious books on Africa, academic books, some textbooks
and the Three Crowns. Anyhow, I was not particularly looking around
but Rex Collins in particular said: âLook that job thatâs going
on Heinemann, have you put in for it?â So, I thought well there
is no harm in having an interview and, then, as soon as I realised
how interesting the job was going to be, I was very keen to get
it. And of course, going back to the question of novels, obviously,
the central strength of the AWS from the first was novels both written
and translated into English. So, it just seemed to me a very exciting
opportunity.

NB: Why did you leave after 17 years?

JC: The AWS was started in 1962. Chinua
Achebe was the editorial advisor. Keith was building up the whole
of overseas, the Third World Department and decided that I should
help him specifically on Africa where there was the biggest potential
for publishing. And so, I joined him after the series had been running
for about 5 years. By 1972, we got to a 100 titles in the first
ten years, but by then more and more writing was coming in and it
was rather an exciting period in the 1970s and there was a lot of
work to publish, because in 1972, when Chinua Achebe decided to
stand down as editorial advisor, he first of all thought of Ngugi
or he and I thought of Ngugi. In fact, I went to visit him just
after the Biafran war at the remains of his house on the campus
at Nsukka in the University of Nigeria, in Eastern Nigeria, (what
was formerly Biafra) and he said to me then: âwhy donât you try
Ngugi?â So I and my colleagues decided that was what we would do.

Ngugi accepted without hesitation, but after six
weeks or a couple of months, he thought it would interrupt his work
on his own writing. So, we decided at that time to bring in much
more active participation from the new companies and then, new editorial
departments in Ibadan and Nairobi. In Nairobi, a young student or
former student of Ngugi, Henry Chakava, came in about 1972/1973.
Aig Higo had been head of the Heinemann Nigeria Company for some
eight or ten years. So, he was, a sort of, a generation older that
Henry Chakava. Then we set about integrating decisions between —
we had a sort of triangular basis that we all exchanged our reports.
They were having all manuscripts coming into base through Nigeria
and Kenyaâ¦ so, as a result of this we were publishing yet more and
by the end of the 1970s, there was a Nigerian oil boom and container
loads of books going out to Nigeria. There was the Kenyan coffee
boom — black gold as it was called —and there was a
very lively publishing scene about that time and Heinemann was activeâ¦
I think Longman and Macmillan as wellâ¦so there was a lot going on
in Nairobi.

And then in April 1982, it was an absolute crash
because the Nigerian foreign exchange closed. And a lot of countries
in Africa were inundated. That killed the whole forward impetus.
We moved into the 1980s â¦ it was actually christened the book famine
because people did not have the foreign exchange to buy books for
Africaâ¦ having in the 1970s being buying and buying and buyingâ¦
and so during the 1980s, Heinemann had four owners in three years,
and the new managing directors were always told âcut jobs, increase
profitâ, and having been an extremely enjoyable firm to work for,
in 1984, I think, eight out of the ten directors either went on
or moved on to other jobs elsewhe

I demanded my redundancy because the new managing
director said that he just wanted to keep a finger, a toe in Africaâ¦âOh
James, you know so much about it.â So I said: âwhat can I publish?â
And he said âwell a couple of African writers Series and complete
the UNESCO history of Africaâ. So, having been publishing something
like forty books a year, he was talking about three or four books
a year. So, I said âso, you donât need meâ â¦

So with some difficulty I got some redundancy that
enabled me to â¦ two important factors â¦in setting my own companyâ¦
the other important factor was this new managing director had decided
to cut out all academic publishing. So, he sold the sociology list
one weekend, and he didnât quite know what to do with the African
studies list. So, fortunately, I was able to negotiate with him
to take over all the contracts because if I hadnât taken over he
would have to make compensation. So, he thought it was of advantage
to me. So, I took over people like Ngugi, Terrence Ranger, and so
on, where I was already in negotiation. So I literally could remove
my filing cabinet.

NB: You took these manuscripts with you?

JC: A lot of manuscripts and some books
on proofâ¦ They were actually already typeset, lots of projectsâ¦
When I went to a big investment bank in London to discuss whether
they would lend me some money, and the chap there said (the deputy
chairman, who was the person I knew said): âare you starting this
new company in order to make a fortune or in order to further your
career?â So, I sort of blushed because I felt I was being rather
guilty just to say âfurthering my careerâ. You know, keeping that
going because that was what I was interested in and then he said:
âthatâs perfectly alright, you might make a fortune anyhow.â (Laugh)
But, so, um, my wife and I, my wife hadnât had publishing experience
before and we decided to plunge off and start up our own business.

NB: And then Keith Sambrook joined you?

JC: Keith was still with Heinemann and then
in about 1987 or 1988, he left Heinemann and joined us. In fact,
he had been a sort of honorary member when I used to go and visit
him in his office in the Heinemann probably once a week to go through
projects with him. Soâ¦.

NB: You played a very important role in the
âupbringingâ of African Writers Series for nearly two decades. Some
commentators consider you the Godfather of the Series. Looking back,
how would you sum up this experience? In other words, what does
AWS mean to you?

JC: Who were you quoting? Ngara? â¦ I just
wanted to say youâve got it straight. Emmanuel Ngara at the Zimbabwe
Book Fair, in about 1982, I think it wasâ¦ he was chairing a very
distinguished gathering of African writers and he saidâ¦ he described
James Currey âhere is the grandfather of African literatureâ and
in the coffee break, Nadine Gordimer said: âOh, hello grand grandfather!â
So, I said, âOh Gosh!â I was only in my mid-forties, so I thought,
âI am not quite that old, Jesus.â Anyhow, the next Monday, Iâd given
an interview and the Zimbabwe Herald had over its centre page a
headline which was âA Godfather of African Publishingâ. So, you
can take your choice as to whether I am a grandfather or the godfather.
(Laughs)

NB: Of course, you had such a strong impact
on its upbringing from the tender age of five to adulthood.

JC: Yes, I think that I was able to come
in at the time when Heinemann had realised that it really did have
potential. Alan, the chairman, if he hadnât been an adventurous
publisher, he might have said âOh, Well, we are doing well enough
with thatâ... and this is what the accountants wanted us to doâ¦they
said that the first thirty titles were much more profitable than
the books we did later. But the fact was thatâ¦ I thinkâ¦ my seventeen
years with Heinemann were the period when there was a great flowering
because, as you will realise, very few African authors had been
published in London and they said that the great thing about AWS
was that it gave Africans, African writers the idea that they could
write. Theyâve seen those pictures on the back and so on, and reading
the blurb, the biography about the peopleâ¦ these are quite young
people, these people are writingâ¦ you knowâ¦ it is not just Shakespeare
â¦ it isnât just Dickensâ¦ these are people that are writing about
the Africa that we know now. And so, this was very infectious, I
think, and gave people impetus, as you probably can tell meâ¦ but
one of the people that Ngugi was much impressed by was George Lamming
and he says in Homecoming how there was the moment when he
suddenly realised how the novel can speak to him and, I think, this
happened to a lot of people that they thought: âMy goodness, these
Nigeriansâ¦ I can do it as wellâ these young Kenyans, Ngugi and so
on, they got the idea â¦

And so, I was in the fortunate position because
I was not just doing the AWS, I was publishing an enormous range
of primary, secondary and university textbooks as well, academic
studies, only a handful of African studies, but the AWS was part
of thatâ¦ but certainly the great thing was that the success of the
Series gave us enough confidence, when I say us, I and my colleagues,
to be experimental that we knew that because, like all good book
publishing, it does have to be based on good marketing, I mean intelligent
marketing and because Heinemann was, particularly under Keith Sambrookâs
direction, linking up with these offices in Africaâ¦ they built up
very good marketing network. Also, of course, the universities were
expanding and literature departments were starting and, of course,
there were new examination boards â West Africa Examination Council
and East Africa Examination Council â were setting exams and they
were using African texts. They were not just using Shakespeare and
Dickens. To go back to my role, my role was to take advantage of
all these opportunities and so, that was what was fun about it.

NB: Van Milne, the overseas director at HEB,
decided to start the AWS to make African writers available in cheap
paperback in Africa. Could you shed some light on his position and
his role?

JC: Well, it would be quite a good idea
if you talk to Keith Sambrook sometime. He knew Van personally.
I only met Van occasionally and that was before I came and you get
a much more accurate picture from Keith. I think, like a lot of
good ideas in publishing... the ideas are good, but how do you turn
them to reality... I mean, I think Van and Alan Hill were also inspired
in choosing Chinua Achebe as editorial advisor because that was
a key African voice and he was in broadcasting in Nigeriaâ¦ So, the
idea came together at that stage, I think, partly because Alan was
so amazed when he went to Nigeria in 1959 and he thought that he
would be praised for having published Chinua Achebe when nobody
knew himâ¦ âOh, young Achebe doing the broadcastingâ¦ has he already
had a novel published in London?â these were British people saying
this, you know, they did not believe an African could live up to
the standard of a supposedly eminent publishing houseâ¦

NB: As someone who is publishing books on Africa,
how do you regard the reluctance of British Publishing houses to
engage with African writing before Heinemann took the initiative?

JC: I think it is instructive to look at
the comparison with what happened to writers from the Caribbeanâ¦
umâ¦as always, it is a matter of who you do encourage and in the
case of the Caribbean writers, the two crucial factors in bringing
on Caribbean writers were literary magazines in the Caribbean and
the BBC, then colonial service â¦I think it was called Caribbean
Voices and that encouraged quite a lot of Caribbean writers to write
and they submitted their books to London publishing housesâ¦ of course,
the situation in France was well ahead as the whole sort of move
towards Negritude started in the late 1930s, involving both Caribbean
and African, particularly Senegalese Diop and Senghor and so on
... Several of the best African Francophone African writers were
publishing in Paris in the 1950s such as Oyono, Beti, and Sembene
Ousmaneâ¦ but very few books, as you know, were picked upâ¦ one that
got a lot of attention, of course, was Amos Tutuolaâs Palm-Wine
Drinkardâ¦ because Dylan Thomas, in his individual maverick way,
just took delight in itâ¦ but that, in a way, was the hampering fact
because I think that was, sort of, felt to be the genuine African
articleâ¦ and so, although there were one or two other books publishedâ¦
I mean Peter Abrahams had several publishedâ¦

Talking about the way that the Caribbeans brought
on by British publishersâ¦ Naipaul, Lammingâ¦ a lot of them had their
first books out in the Fifties and then to William Heinemannâs credit,
they published Things Fall Apart in hardback in 1958â¦ and
â¦ as you probably know, Achebe was made to study Mr Johnson
by Joyce Cary and thought: âif anybody could get away with writing
such a bad book about Nigeria, I can do betterââ¦umâ¦ so that was
sort of his feeling.

Anyhow, I think that everything was happening fast
in the Sixties, a period of independence and everything â¦ and very
quickly, Heinemann Educational Books, which Keith and I were working
for Alan Hill, the chairman, took such a dominating lead that other
publishers just really decided they did not quite know what to do
anyhowâ¦ and of course one of the things we were willing to do was
to really discuss books with authors, give them to readers to report
on, send the reports to them â¦umâ¦ we did persuade William Heinemann
to market some of the books in hardback first and then Heinemann
Educational Books published them in paperback in the AWS. So, we
spent quite a lot of effort trying to encourage Secker & Warburg,
also in the Heinemann Group (and they had quite a reputation for
high level of intellectual work) but on the whole they did not want
to take books from us. They sold us occasional titles â¦ umâ¦Yambo
Ouologuemâs Bound to Violence, Soyinkaâs anthology of verse,
Kenyattaâs Facing Mount Kenya and so onâ¦ but they didnât
want to give a hardback publication to our authors.

So, we, at Heinemann Educational Books, also started
selecting some of the authors for hardback publications because,
of course, as Denis Brutus, said to meâ¦ I mean several people said
this, but I was reading this the other day, he said: âlook, itâs
all very well, you know, but I want to be regarded as a poet and
not just as an African.â And of course this was the advantage and
the disadvantage of the African Writers Series that it had a clear
continental identity which drew attention to the books in Africa,
but there was a danger of it excluding writers from the general
literary market, particularly New York and London where, quite frankly,
most enthusiastic reactions of a lot of people was at the best patronising
towards Africansâ¦ they didnât really feel that Africans could writeâ¦well,
there are exceptionsâ¦ but that was their general feeling whereas,
of course, particularly the public libraries were to be enormous
patrons of new writings in those daysâ¦ they used to spend a lot
of money onâ¦judging by reviews, but they really supported new writers.
So, the Caribbean writers got a lot of that advantage. Our writers
got some advantage when we did them in the hardback as well. They
would get reviewed and they would get into libraries. But â¦ umâ¦
it goes back to the fact that the AWS, more or less, in the first
twenty years was selling about eighty per cent of its copies in
Africa and about ten per cent in Britain and ten per cent in the
US... so, it was not only African writers, but it was mainly African
distributionâ¦

NB: Publishing, it seems, served the ârealisticâ
objectives of the Empire by providing the reading materials, educational
textbooks, carrying out the mission civilisatrice, and domesticating
the colonised. However, the case of a number of established British
publishing houses such as Oxford University Press, Longman or Macmillan
reveals the paradoxical relations inherent in the cultural conditions
between the British companies and âAfricaâ both in the colonial
and postcolonial times. The question I want to ask is what was the
rationale behind the persistence of such companies which succeeded
in triumphing in such environments previously seen as opposing to
the colonial system?

JC: Well, obviously youâve put your finger
on an important point here, because all those companies you mentioned
were and other ones like Nelsonâ¦ they were big on textbooks, on
school textbooks and the assumption was a school textbook market
and there was not a general market...umâ¦that you could, as you say,
the British equivalent of mission civilisatrice was, when
I joined the Oxford University Press it had enormously successful
Oxford English courses, it had tropical Africa and world historyâ¦.

Of course, it was better to have textbooks which
were written for Africa than just sending British textbooks which
used to happen. But what Alan Hill, Van Milne and Keith Sambrook
had began to prove, by the time I joined, was that there was a general
market in Africa as well as a school textbook market that, although
this was an educational company and, therefore, the big sales were
then and continued to be school textbook examination adoptions.

Nevertheless, the thing that was absolutely marvellous
about the African Writers Series during the Seventies was that by
that stage there were university campus bookshops â not only university
campus bookshops but other kind of bookshops â and that they were
selling Penguinâs, African Writers Series, gardening books for an
adult audience because, as you know, a lot of the people involved
in educational systems were adults, obviously â I mean, there were
the teachers, there were the inspectors, there were the exam setters
and there were the families, the wivesâ¦ and the university campus
bookshops became very good general bookshops and you can find all
sorts of interesting books there.

Really â with probably the exception of Blackwells
at that time â there were probably better bookshops on African campuses
in the late sixties and seventies than there were on the British
campuses, and so a general market grew for the African Writers Seriesâ¦
although as an educational company, it would be assumed that it
was going to be first and foremost a school textbook market. And
that is what of course, in actual monetary terms, it turned out
to be; but the same time, then it introduced writers â obviously
there were all sorts of restrictions if you just published for school:
sex, religion, and politics were all considered problems. But Chinua
Achebe was having nothing of that and when I came, when I joined
him, we actually were absolutely determined that it should be first
and foremost an adult series and some of the texts that we used
in schools and they could be used in all sort of ways: Ayi Kwei
Armahâs The Beautiful Ones are not yet Born has very powerful
sustained image of âshitâ and it was very difficult for me to get
that accepted because you are never going to sell a book like that
in schools. But it got prescribed for âAâ Level because it was exceptionally
an outstanding book and this image was central to his whole attitude
towards the corrupt African regime.

This is the first of a three-part interview,
which is published here for the first time. It was carried out by
Nourdin Bejjit at James Currey Publishers in August, 2005.

Nourdin Bejjitis a Moroccan Student. He
did his MA in National and International Literatures in English
at the Institute of English Studies, University of London. He is
currently working on a PhD in the Literature Department at the Open
University. His research focuses on the involvement of Heinemann
Educational Books in publishing African Literature, and is part
of the Literature Department’s larger AHRC-funded project
on the Colonial and Postcolonial History of the Book.